2018 Year in Review: Anniversaries

Every day, some articles on Britannica.com see unexpected increases in Internet traffic in response to world events. Sometimes we can’t figure out why an article trends, but more often than not we can find the cause. These five Year in Review features list some of the trending articles from 2018—grouped by themes—that had interesting, unexpected, or otherwise noteworthy reasons behind their traffic leaps. This entry concerns articles on topics that had significant anniversaries in 2018.

March 16 marked the 50th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre, the mass killing of about 500 unarmed villagers by U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War.

The Boston Marathon bombing took place five years ago on April 15. The bombing and subsequent manhunt through the Boston area over the following week was one of the most dramatic news stories of the 2010s.

Possibly the least-known as well as the oddest entry in this list is the Defenestration of Prague, which took place on May 23, 1618. Those of you who already know the five-dollar word defenestration can probably figure out the basic act that happened on that day: someone was indeed thrown out of a window. Actually, three imperial regents from Bohemia were thrown out of the windows of Prague Castle (without sustaining serious injuries, somehow) by angry Protestant citizens, setting off the Thirty Years’ War.

While most of the topics that trended because of an anniversary were related to politics or war, we did have at least one less-sobering reminder of a past event (if you’re not an Edmonton Oilers fan, that is). August 9 was the 30th anniversary of the landmark trade of hockey legend Wayne Gretzky from the Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings, a move that ended Edmonton’s NHL dynasty and greatly increased the popularity of hockey on the U.S. west coast.

A momentous centennial took place on November 11, which marked 100 years since the signing of the armistice that ceased World War I, which officially ended at 11:00 AM on 11/11/1918.

One of the most famous speeches in American history, the Gettysburg Address, was delivered by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln 155 years ago on November 19 at the dedication of the National Cemetery on the site of the Battle of Gettysburg in southern Pennsylvania.